This week has been awesome! Tse Jimuih and her two kids came to General Conference! Both sessions on Sunday! We got them a bingo thing and a coloring thing and skittles for the bingo. I'm pretty sure they liked it! One cool thing about the gospel. When you serve people you really do grow a love for them. In the mission people will say if you hate your companions serve them. If you want to love the HK people more, serve them and so on.. totally true. The more we have been helping Tse Jimuih and her two kids Ahin and Ayuh come unto Christ the stronger our relationship has become! Tse jimuih is my chinese mom! Our relationship with their family has really grown. That's important in being able to help other people. If you honestly want to help someone else in anyway shape or form you need to first love them. That is also the most rewarding part! I have so many new friends here in Hong Kong be it missionaries, members, converts, less-actives, or investigators. Love is the center of all of it!

 LOVE you all!! (see what i did there)

 Love, Elder Zach Cederlof

Tse Jimuih (Sister Tse) and her two kids have been progressing. We shared with them the restoration video and commited them to pray. During that movie they were all dead silent and the spirit was soo strong in there. I love being able to help them. We have a really good relationship with their family. They all really want to know if these things are true and they have committed to come to General Conference on Sunday. I can't wait for this upcoming weekend! That is when we will be able to see conference! Missionaries will watch it in English so we get the most possible out of it.  Some exciting news about Adi.  She and Ellorie went to a BYU Hawaii conference thing. Everyone in the ward is hoping that they'll go to BYU Hawaii because it is so hard to find an active member in Hong Kong!  It's obviously not final but a good start! So many of the members here have married nonmembers and it leads to inactivity or a lot of unneccesary challenges. There are the success stories where the non member decides to join the church but its still a lot easier to marry "in the covenant".

It has been raining a lot this past week. Pretty fun. One day we were out walking back from Sham Tseng soaked because we didn't bring umbrellas.  (The weather said chance of some scattered, but in HK that means its going to dump buckets of rain!)  When we tried to stop people they were just like oh sad... haha.

I'm so thankful for the opportunity to be serving and trying to come closer to our Savior everyday. Whether you're a missionary or not, everyday is a good day to come closer unto Christ. The first step is to Commit. Once you commit the rest will come!! Love you all!
 Love, Elder Zach Cederlof

I feel like I just emailed all of you the other day. Nothing too crazy has happened since Wednesday. But definitely some good experiences. Gummy sandwiches may or may not have been part of 24's. Elder Kang (district leader) and I were companions this past Friday. It was a good day. We both got to learn and try some new things. We then together taught Tse Jimuih and her two kids. Definitely the highlight of the last couple days. I love them!  We shared about prophets and used a light and mirror analogy and then testified about Jesus and his baptism. Since they have started to pray together as a family there has definitely been a change in them. Tse Jimuih said that one of her sons said he wants to be a missionary when he is older! haha When they were going to A Hin's piano recital they were all super nervous and so they prayed and he did amazing! I love seeing the change in their lives.  After talking about baptism we invited them all to be baptized. Tse Jimuih said that for the moment she can’t because she has always believed Buddha and her husband is an avid believer (did I use avid correctly?)  But she said she wants to continue to learn more and she said her kids can. Both of her kids accepted. We are now excited for the challenge to give her husband the opportunity to hear the gospel. Once he comes they will all be able to come together. As for now we are going to continue to help them work towards baptism and feel the spirit and when the dad sees the change in his family he will want a part of it! I’m so thankful for the opportunity to be able to see how much the gospel really changes people's lives. Now if only we could only notice how much it really changes us, we would be a lot more thankful and more obedient. Weekly challenge: spend some time thinking, pondering, and praying and find how just how much the gospel has changed you. That knowledge hopefully should then lead you to have the desire to share it!! You’re all awesome!!

Love, Elder Zach Cederlof HK

First birthday week in Hong Kong and I'm so grateful it isn't my last! It is weird to think how fast time has been flying. I don't like it but hey what can ya do. At this time in Hong Kong there is a huge test called the DSE. It’s huge. Like the kids in high school prepare their entire lives for this test. And it is several weeks long so we were unable to meet with a couple people this week that we were hoping to meet. But it’s okay. We called and talked with them. More exciting news... Tse Jimuih and her 2 boys have been continuing to come to church. When we first met Tse Jimuih (they are from mainland but southern province so Cantonese is first language) she didn't have much interest in the gospel because life was all good. But her kids wanted to learn. We have shared about the atonement and other ways the gospel blesses us and I think she has finally reached a point where she now has a desire to learn more about the gospel. She dressed up all nice for church (got a little teary eyed when I saw that btw) and her two kids were more reverent. Luckily they love me and elder Hartwig and last time we met we shared about scriptures, prayer, and church and used that cups and knives thing. The kids loved it and we committed them all to pray, read, and come to church together. The following Sunday was the time I just described to you. The gospel will change lives. I met a man last week that said he used to go to a Christian church but it didn't change him. The gospel that has been restored through a living prophet named Joseph Smith will change you, if you allow it. It's a two part process and a huge part of it is charity. If patience, loyalty, kindness, but no charity it meaneth nothing. (not an exact quote but it's in the bible somewhere)  The charity will lihngdou (lead) us to have the desire to help other people and their salvation. I love you all! Peace!

 Love, Elder Zach Cederlof

We met with Tse Jimuih and her 2 kids. We called them and tried to schedule them for the next day but she said she couldn't right then, but they wanted to buy us lunch so she said she'd call the next day. She called us and we met them for McDonalds, but it was full, then KFC also was full. She had to meet some friends later so we just taught them at a park. Why do you need the Savior every day? Not just when you have problems?  

Virgil is our most recent person we have found. We met with him on Saturday and gave him a tour of the chapel. Straight away we shared about baptism and we covered it several times throughout the lesson. However, we didn't feel right to invite him yet. But he came to church the next day.

That next day at church Elder Smith and I gave talks. (Elder Smith is not my companion, he is another Tsuen Wan missionary from Utah)  They only chose me and him out of the 4 of us. We had 10-15 minutes each. I shared about personal responsibility because in order for all of us to be able to find people to teach we will need to purify ourselves and that all starts at personal responsibility. At the end of my talk, after sitting down, I had to rethink through what I just talked about. The gift of tongues is real. It all felt so natural, I felt like I was just using English. (But it was actually Chinese) also I read a pingyam Book of Mormon in my talk so now the ward thinks I know characters haha. 

 Love, Elder Zach Cederlof

The "Businessman" haircut!



No letter to all today, just a picture.  Here's an excerpt from my letter:  I'll be playing ping pong today with another guy that is supposed to be really good haha. It's so funny because these people will have their paddle that they have in a case and 3 balls in a case... please... I don't need that... I use the paddles that the church already has!!  Check out the pics I'm sending you. In Hong Kong the allowed hairstyles are a little bit different. I think you'll be proud of me hahaha. In the US missionaries probably wouldn't be allowed to have the same hairstyle as me, but in HK totally fine. I shook Elder Holland's hand with it. Its because business men here will have the same style or even crazier so it's respectable. haha

 Love you!

 Love, Elder 施長louh